Archive for August, 2008

Drifting World Champion Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Bosch Spark Plugs have teamed up to stage an exciting one-of-a-kind event in downtown Los Angeles next Saturday. Titled “Performance Art”, Vaughn will be using his high-powered Ford Mustang as his “brush”, Falken tires as his “paint”, and the pavement as his “canvas”. Vaughn will drift through the streets to create unique pattern of tire marks until he feels his masterpiece is complete.

“I am very excited that Bosch has looked at drifting further then just the competitive element. Drifting like many action sports is truly an expression of personality and style, and to many considered a form of art; leave it to Bosch to take the initiative to highlight these facts on such a large scale. I am looking forward to expressing my style and personality while leaving my mark on the downtown streets of LA.”

This exciting event has been described as a “Jackson Pollack on pavement” and “taking art to the streets.”

Join us as Vaughn leaves drifting’s mark on the art world as he creates a unique, fast and extremely powerful display of performance art.

Naoto Suenaga took his street prepped Nissan S13 240sx to victory in the pouring rain at Ebisu. Seems like we have a new trend in Drifting that involves the pouring rain and Drifting events….hopefully that streak doesn’t continue into the next few weeks. Congrats to Naoto Suenaga for taking home a victory over the weekend! Thanks to Antonio Alvendia reporting to us from Speedhunters!

To us it looks about the same without the cool camo graphics and some Redbull stickers on it but here goes nothing. The unveiling went down last night and here are some photos of Mad Mike’s revamped Mazda Rx-7.

Mike was able to bring home a podium win at Formula D Singapore in this car so let’s see how he can fair at the Redbull World Challenge in November. Under the bonnet Mad Mike ripped out his three rotor to place in a N/A 26B-PP four rotor engine with a 5 speed HKS sequential transmission and Motec Throttle bodies. The car is rumored to be just shy of 500hp naturally aspirated as it stands.
See you in the States this November Mike.

Our cover story and Top Gear USA’s Tanner Foust is bombing around Italy right now in a Lamborghini Reventón, on his way to tackling the Nürburgring in a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. It seems that Lamborghini cannot get enough of Drifting drivers to show off it’s Italian supercars. Remember we featured a story not to long ago with Sam Hubinette piloting one in a commercial as seen here. Autofiends will continue to stalk Tanner Foust around Europe and we’ll keep you posted if anything happens.

One of the longest standing and one of my favorite grassroots organizations here in America for Drifters is no more as of today. Great leadership from Alex Bahena and former Formula D driver John Yim lead the company to great events around the midwest/Texas area. John Yim cited taking care of his family has become a bigger priority and just being busy with work makes them unable to perform the tasks and long hours required to throw events.Hopefully someone will grab the reigns of this great production and run with it for the local Texas guys. Daily Drifter practice events from 2003-2008! John Yim informed us they will most likely continue doing demo’s and helping with Formula D Pro Am in the future but practice events have had the brakes put on for the time being.

We have been blown up at the PM Lifestyle Office with calls about this huge alliance and big D1 Grand Prix season for 2009. It’s just more hype, smoke, and mirrors coming from this camp. They blamed Formula D for canceling it’s All-Star event which made about ZERO sense. Just because they can fool magazines like Stupid Street to do interviews with their new “sheriff in town” doesn’t mean anyone in the Drifting community buys they are back again for the third time. We have even heard Richard Goodwin’s name thrown into the frey of people running things on the back end. a A quick google search will show you he is an old founder of Hot Import Nights. This sums up how we feel about the situation. Our parents always told us to stick to what we are good at so we offer the same suggestion to D1.

Things D1GP is good at: Throwing events in Japan

Things D1GP isn’t good at: Throwing events in the United States of America

It appears our buddy Vaughn Gittin Jr. recently gave the guys over at Jalopnik.com a spin in his Mustang and they seemed to enjoy it. View the quick story and photos they posted on the blog today about their adventure in Detroit with Vaughn Gittin Jr. and his awesome AV8er demo Ford Mustang.